


Arctic Grey

by rainer76



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Laura Feels, post 2x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wait? What? “ Derek sounds dreamy, spaced out, in short he sounds nothing like Derek at all, but Stiles is still reeling over the whole faerie revelation (joke?) when Derek pushes onto his elbows, ears pointed like an extra from the Lord of the Rings, one of those elves reborn from mud, and changes the topic completely.</p><p>“You smell like bruises.”</p><p>“Dude, what kind of segue is that?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arctic Grey

“Drunk?”

“More like tipsy.”

“Inebriated?”

“Literally, dude, he’s smelling the garden flowers.”

“Aww,” Stiles drawls, stretching the word out obnoxiously. “So cute.”

“It’s _Derek_. Seriously, it’s creeping me out, he actually smiled for a full ten seconds, there was teeth sans fangs, it’s giving me the willies.”

“You should be using the recording function of the I-Phone and not talking to me. I wanna see this for prosperity…or possible blackmail material.”

“Dude,” Scott shouts down the line. “I have three wolves down for the count. Boyd’s humping my leg and the alpha’s sniffing the gardenia’s. Get your butt over here.”

Stiles lets the phone slip from where it’s wedged between his shoulder and ear and hauls on the steering wheel, turning the jeep sharply onto Maybury street. The houses on one side of the road are whitewashed under the headlights of his vehicle, neat gardens and neat driveways all lined up in a ducks row. The other side is un-developed, the houses facing scrubland and wild bush. Shadows elongate across the road, stretching fingers of darkness, twitching and curling inward with each gust of wind. He sees Isaac sprawled on the nature strip and brings the jeep to a jerky stop. “I thought you guys couldn’t drink alcohol?” he calls out, swinging from the vehicle and resuming his conversation with Scott.

“It wasn’t alcohol, something in the forest,” Scott pants. “Magic mushrooms or some other shit.” He’s standing behind Erica with one arm looped over her shoulder, her body flush with his chest, one hand brushing Erica in inappropriate places. Normally Scott’s face would be flaming red – tomato red - except he’s too preoccupied with Boyd to notice he’s cupping Erica’s breast. Jackson, three feet away, is spinning slow circles under the stars and muttering about magnetic fields and lights. All three of them have shifted, shifted and _inexperienced_ without an Alpha in sight.

Stiles slows his movements down self-consciously, trying to ditch the hyperactive stutter to his limbs and appear as non chase-worthy. Coltish, his mother used to say, while his dad simply labelled it the truth and said bluntly ‘it’s the awkward phrase’. Curiously, Stiles tilts his head up. It’s dark, cold, the natural brilliance of the stars smothered by the town’s lights; the moon’s a bare slither against the sky. “Where’s Derek?”

“Reciting poetry to the garden,” Scott snaps. He twists so can he set a palm against Boyd’s face and pushes him non-too-gently off his leg. “Enough already!”

“How come you’re not affected?”

“Because I wasn’t running with the pack! Man, can we save twenty questions for later?”

Stiles’ begins with Isaac, because unconscious and not moving is a helluva lot safer than wolfed out and humping his thigh. It’s not dignified – for either Stiles _or_ Isaac – but he half drags the other teen to the jeep without bumping his head against the concrete and folds Isaac inside the vehicle like a pretzel, pushing and cursing a blue streak. He leaves both Erica and Boyd to Scott, circling the nearest garden with one eye fixed on the dark windows, hoping they’re quiet enough not to disturb the occupants.

Derek _is_ in the flowerbed but he’s not reciting poetry, sprawled on his back in the soft dirt with his wife-beater riding high, showing the flat planes of his stomach. His claws are out, digging holes into the earth, eyes gleaming red like fired coal.

“Hey,” Stiles says from a safe distance. “Scott said you guys were splashed with fairy dust?”

“They’re malicious little fuckers,” Derek slurs, his voice as close to a whine as Stiles has ever heard.

“Wait? _What?_ “ Derek sounds dreamy, spaced out, in short he sounds nothing like Derek at all, but Stiles is still reeling over the whole faerie revelation ( _joke?_ ) when Derek pushes onto his elbows, ears pointed like an extra from the _Lord of the Rings_ , one of those fucked-up elves reborn from mud, and changes the topic completely.

“You smell like bruises.”

“Dude, what kind of segue is that?”

“Blood under the surface.”

“Right,” Stiles says, dubiously, and inches away a step. “‘Cause the other three, they’re all happy drunks, trust you to be the miserable alcoholic in the pack.”

And for the record, Stile’s face _has_ cleared up, there’s a yellow smudge on his cheekbone but the worst of Gerald’s damage thankfully passed. His back, spine, and kidneys took the brunt of the attack when grandpa psycho tired of whaling on his face. Stiles spent three days sleeping on his stomach; he’s still a patchwork quilt of bruises and discoloured skin but out of sight is out of mind, hidden beneath layers of clothing…unless you’re the Alpha of a werewolf pack.

“Was that the first time you were attacked?” Derek asks. His voice is deceptively soft, eyes half-lidded.

Stiles shifts restlessly, colour creeping across his cheekbones, yellow and red like a stop light, all he needs now is the colour green for a complete set. Shame hits him like vomit. “Derek, _get up_.”

“It was, wasn’t it? The first time you were ever hit. Repeatedly.”

“No. I’m pretty sure there’s been concussions against steering wheels, close contact against doors and all kind of walls. I’ve been dragged around by the collar like somebody’s chew-toy and chased across the field by the whole lacrosse team. So, no, it wasn’t the first time I was attacked.”

“But you’ve never been hit like Isaac. Not by someone bigger and stronger, who has all the experience and knows just how to make it hurt. You’ve never been hit so fast you can’t brace for the next blow, can’t see it, can’t breath around it. It’s not the same thing as being slammed against a wall.”

“Shut up. Shut up, Derek, everybody around me is supernatural.”

“Gerard wasn’t.”

He stumbles back three steps. Derek is a chatty drunk, an honest drunk, and truthfully, Stiles prefers the alpha male who can’t string three words together. “Screw you. He wanted me to pull an Allison and go screaming, calling for help. Acting the victim, throw everyone off balance, and hope someone will avenge this shit?” He motions at his face; the bruises Derek can’t see that run the length of his back. “Beat me up for half an hour and then let me go, see how crazy he can make Scott; sorry I didn’t feel inclined to play into that gambit, sorry I didn’t know how to defend against it.”

Derek shrugs, actually has the temerity to roll his eyes. “So you texted Scott to say you were okay, avoided everyone else so we couldn’t get a look at what Gerald had actually done, and drove over Jackson when we needed the help. Doesn’t answer the question, was that the first time you were ever attacked, beaten with _intent._ ”

His face twists. His hair is too short, his expression too naked, every flicker of emotion exposed, it’s the first time Stiles wishes he had something to hide behind, even if it’s only a stupid fringe. “Yes.”  He's never been the most popular kid in school, but he's never been bullied either.

“You froze.” It’s not a question this time it’s a blunt statement, as if Derek expected nothing less.

There’s the green, Stiles thinks, coming up fast and stinging his throat. He can’t speak over the poison of it, merely nods, because the faster he admits it the faster it’s over, and the faster Derek will want nothing more to do with him. Maybe Derek saw the cowardice from the very beginning, running through Stiles like a fault line. Maybe that’s why he never offered the bite.

“I’ll teach you how to fight.” Derek says into the silence, and flops back down into the flowerbed, breathing in deeply as if that’s the end of the discussion. “Boxing first to build up your cardio then the harder disciplines, too. Someone should have done it beforehand.”

And that’s so far out of the lines it’s not even on the same colouring book.

Stiles feels his mouth open then shut, a fish stranded out of water. “I don’t need your help, Miyagi.”

“Better yet, I’ll teach you not to think and just _act_.”

“Because that works so well for you.”

“Haven’t frozen yet.”

“Lying in a flowerbed, drunk, and unusually chatty, high on pixie dust?”

Derek frowns, his claws fisting into the earth, eyebrows a single line. Half-wolfed out, sleek muscle and unnatural heat. “We got swatted by faeries…the little fuckers.”

“That’s either hysterical or alarming, I can’t decide yet.” And Stiles can’t exactly walk away from that line, because hello, _faeries._ He glances toward the jeep. Erica’s safely in the back, Boyd’s given up humping Scott’s leg and is having intimate relations with his hood instead, and, hey, dentage! “Did you piss on Tinkerbelle’s favourite tree or something?”

“Sum’thin’”

“A question for a question, and don't forget you owe me an answer. Why don’t you look like Laura?”

“Typically speaking, women have two X chromosomes and men only have…”

Stiles kicks the bottom of his heel, jostles Derek’s leg to one side and squats down beside him. His eyes are red, red, red, there’s sweat in his hairline, tension down his arms and through his hands. Stiles follows the line all the way to his claws and wonders if Derek’s trying to hold onto the earth, stop himself from floating away entirely. He’s not vicious, the same way Boyd, Isaac and Erica aren’t vicious, he’s been more forthcoming in the last two minutes than Stiles has seen in the last two years, and if this is an altered state, faerie dust or magic mushrooms or wild flowers combined, then Stiles approves of the calming factor.

“Laura was a full on wolf when we dug her out of the ground - and in case we never said so, so very, very sorry about that, disturbing her gravesite and all - but Laura was an alpha, and Peter was an alpha, and so are you, but not one of you look alike. I mean, she was a genuine _wolf._ ”

“The shift reflects who we are.”

“Like Jackson became cold-blooded? And Peter an insane monster? And you…?"  

“Caught somewhere between, both man and wolf.” His teeth are sharp in the night, bared and gleaming like ivory. His eyes track over Stiles neck, the bruise on his cheekbone, the pulse at his throat; his voice turns sandpaper rough. “I need an anchor, something to hold on to, and anger is a _human_ emotion. A human form, I can’t do what Laura did, I could never shift entirely, it’s not in me to let the anger go.”

She was beautiful, Stiles thinks, and doesn’t have the courage to say it. He never saw her alive, fully shifted. Laura was dead and rotting, her fur matted with dirt and half congealed blood, her forelegs stretched out before her and her coat arctic grey. They’re majestic - and Stiles imagines she would have been majestic – in all the ways that Derek and Peter, Scott and Isaac just scream out wrong, strung out on the dividing line.

“You would have been just like her,” Derek whispers. “Falling headlong into your own senses. Chasing your own tail for the rush. Playful, like a wolf. Anger, resentment, revenge, they have no place outside the human world, just pack and protection…if you ever took my bite…” and his eyes flicker, turn arterial dark. “You wouldn’t be like the rest of us.”

_You'd shift the same way Laura did._

Human anchors for a half human form. Stiles blinks and leans forward, sets his palm against Derek’s chest, fingertips against torso, a rapid heartbeat that’s animal fast. Stiles already lives inside his head, needs medication to even out his ADHS, he thinks falling into heightened senses would be as natural as breathing, and he thinks Laura managed something that Peter and Derek never did. She let the monster go. Entirely.

“I’m not like the rest of you now,” he says simply.

He hauls Derek upward, supports his weight when he staggers. They trample the flowerbed together and stagger toward the jeep. “Question for a question?”

“I already answered.”

“No, but seriously, how’d you manage to piss off the faeries?”


End file.
